Reimagining Rent: Safer Renting Partners with the Young Foundation

We’re delighted to announce our partnership with the Young Foundation as they launch the Reimagining Rent programme, working with innovative campaigns that are tackling the issues created by the private renting crisis. One of these innovations is the approach of our very own Safer Renting programme, which works to create a better private rented sector for tenants and drive slum landlords out of business by designing and supporting pathways out of slum rentals, providing advocacy in action, and influencing social policy.

Safer Renting works outside of the areas covered by mainstream housing organisations, being one of the first programmes to address the emerging areas of housing stress in outer London, where people’s need for housing is being exploited both legally and illegally. Driven by the expertise of our team, Safer Renting’s innovative approach is led by nationally-regarded experts in private housing policy and practice who bring decades of local authority and advice sector experience. We engage the people least likely to be reached by generic housing advice services – people with complex barriers to help, who have issues accessing legal-aided support and won’t claim benefits. Our targeted approach gathers intelligence on where London’s most vulnerable tenants live, and enables us to reach those who are least likely to know their rights or access advice. A new, effective model that will be expanding nationally soon, Safer Renting fits perfectly with the innovative campaigns that are launching Reimagining Rent.

Roz Spencer, Safer Renting’s Project Director, said:

“Working on a start-up project in a very challenging area can often feel a lonely place. It’s also vital to us to know we’re not only helping people being exploited by slum landlords, but that we are actually contributing in the long term to solving the root problems. The Young Foundation team bring buckets of enthusiasm as well as depth and breadth of knowledge and wisdom. They are the difference that makes the difference.”

Funded by the Nationwide Foundation, Reimagining Rent is a unique housing innovation problem that the private rented sector desperately needs. Nearlya third of rented homes fail to meet basic decency standards; eviction from private tenancy accounts for 78% of the rise in homelessness since 2011 and is now the single biggest cause of homelessness; and the number of children in poverty in private rented accommodation has tripled in the last decade, overtaking social housing as the tenure where children are most likely to grow up in poverty. Safer Renting and Reimagining Rent is utilising the Young Foundation’s innovation development expertise and Cambridge House’s housing experience to make renting fairer, kinder and safer. Working to strengthen Safer Renting’s business model, impact and potential to scale, we’re excited to see where our partnership with Reimagining Rent takes us.

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